Before enlightenment I carried water and chopped wood. And after enlightenment I carry water and chop wood.

A quiet and profound enlightenment. My island is all I know. I have never been overseas. And I doubt I ever will.

But everything here is filled with the spirit of silence and calm. Every stone, every leaf, the beaches with their surf, the waves, the trees. People - even they are filled with silence and calm. And they have depth.

For me. I don’t know what happened to them before we met. But the longer I looked at them, the more depth I found there. Found for myself. In their depth, in the depth of the outer world, I found myself.

Looking at a stone, I see a stone. I have looked at stones for a long time and many times. And I saw stones in them and nothing more. And now I look at a stone and I see a stone. I do not see mountains in it, myself, or answers to my questions, as other writers, poets, artists, and simply lovers of speculation can give similar properties to objects.

It’s a stone. But it’s beautiful.

There is infinity in this stone. As in me. And in other people.

But now I need exactly this stone.

I picked it up because my hand reached out to it more than to the other stones around it. There are many of them. There may be a million or two of them here.

There was nothing particularly appealing about it. Initially, it was no different from other stones for me.

Coming here I didn’t know I’d find him. And now, I know little about him. What is his story? What did he see before me?

I don’t have the superpower to penetrate the past like gods or demons. I don’t have the equipment like archaeologists and astrophysicists to study it.

I just have it. The universe gave me the opportunity to be here. The longer I look at this stone, the better I get to know it. It is open. But hidden at the same time.

You see the whole stone, but you don’t see what’s inside. Gradually the stone opens up before you completely. It’s as if you’re passing through it with your gaze and your State.

We are no longer separate. Me and the stone.

If you don’t stop yourself from imagining, your imagination will try to paint pictures of how this stone could have ended up here. How it got its shape. You know, having seen a million different pictures and possibilities, I can’t say which of them was its real story.

But we managed to get to know each other and form a connection.

This happens with everything I see. With every sunset, with every torn leaf on a tree that has already begun to turn yellow, with every fly or bug, with every person and building.

Before enlightenment I saw all this too. I had no time for it really. Although sometimes I found myself doing something like carving wood or making an engraving. However, I was not one with it, as I now find myself in the depth of every moment I live.

Time has practically stopped for me, only occasionally do grains of sand fall inside the hourglass or drops drip from the roof after rain. I can be this stone endlessly. And my whole life will be in it.

But I have no desires. I am not this stone. And it is not my whole life or the whole universe. And certainly not other people.

Many people today are prone to nihilism, apathy and antisocial attitudes. They don’t like noisy places and car races. They don’t like bikers.

I do not see any obstacle to my enlightened state. None of this harms me. Neither will war or another atomic bomb. I will become one with all of this. With millions of people dying alive and their souls full of suffering from senseless death in agony.

Just as I became one with history, with all those who lived before us and died before us. The depth of their torment was revealed to me. And the ease of liberation. I even saw how those who after death could not find a place for themselves, devoured by hatred and thirst for revenge, became a demon and returned to our world to do their work. I did it and together they passed back to the Void. There, enlightenment came to them too. And they dissolved, deciding to let go of all their ties to this world, as a result of which they created so much evil.

They realized that they were not their bodies and souls. That nothing belonged to them and does not belong to them.

Carried away by meditation on some topics other than Emptiness, I was walking the path of a warrior, a samurai. On the secretive path of a ninja, I also found much of interest for myself. But the pride and honor of a samurai attracted me more than the resourcefulness and cunning of a ninja.

I have come to know the kingdom of dead warriors. And I have found their god. All wars are one. And when they die, they fall into this category - a dead warrior. Here I have found the master key to them, and so I became invincible. Dead soldiers of all wars, dead brave men.

But I was still not enlightened. I wanted more power and influence. I thought I could change the world if I only tried and really wanted it. No one could refuse me, because I followed the Path of Strategy and was always a few steps ahead.

I made Japan a prosperous country after the destruction it suffered during the wars that ended with the US dropping nuclear bombs on Japan.

Today I am 121 years old. I can say with confidence that the true essence of enlightenment was revealed to me quite recently. Already after I turned 111.